313 



that although his parish was frequently in the charge of a Curate, 

 yet ho did, occasionally, do duty there himself. 



He spent a largo part of each year at Bath, his house being 

 No. 29, Pulteney-street* There is for Geologists an interest 

 attached to this house from a circumstance which must here 

 be related. Townscnd was on terms of intimate friendship 

 with Richardson, and it was through him that he first became 

 acquainted with WiUiam Smith. Of their observations together 

 I shall speak in my notes on Mr. Richardson's life, bat this is the 

 right place to insert an extract from Professor Phillips's Memoir of 

 of Smith, page 29 :— 



" One day after dining together at the house of the Rev. Joseph Townsend, 

 it ws proposed, hy one of this Triumvirate that a tabular view of the main 

 features of the subject, as it had been expounded by Mr. Smith, and verified 

 and enriched by their joint labours, should be drawn up in wntmg. 

 Richardson held the pen and wrote down from Smith's dictation the different 

 strata accoi-aing to their order of succession in descending order, commencmg 

 with the chalk and numbered in continuous series down to the coal, below 

 which the strata were not sufficiently determined." 



This original M.S., now in the possession of the Geological 

 Society of London, has, in the corner, in Smith's own hand-writing :— 



"This table of the strata dictated by myself is in the hand-writing of the 

 Eev. Benjamin Richardson, and was first reduced to writing at the house of 

 the Rev. Joseph Townsend, Pulteney-street, Bath, 1799. 



(Signed) William Smith." 



Townsend, at the time of his meeting with Smith, was over 60 

 years of age, yet he eagerly took up the new ideas, and in the 

 course of a few years collected together a mass of information, 

 which he introduced into his "Character of Moses" (1812). We 

 shall notice this work more fully further on. 



Although in the introduction he says that the work is the result 

 of laborious investigation during a period of more than 50 years, 

 yet we know clearly that his examination of the succession of 

 strata in England did not commence earlier than his meeting with 

 Smith in 1799. 



He derived much information from the different mineralogists 

 whom he had met in his tra vels, yet he thus clearly states it wa s 

 * Bathwick rate books. 



